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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2011 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/pedlarspackOOholm 



*** The large paper edition of this volume, 
consisting of fifty copies, all being member ed and 
signed by the author, was p?inted on Italian 
hand-made paper, at The Trow Press, in the 
month of June, 1906. This is No. 



A PEDLAR'S PACK 



A PEDLAR'S PACK 



BY 



DANIEL HENRY HOLMES 




NEW YORK 

ERNEST DRESSEL NORTH 

MCMVI 



jUBRJRY of CONGRESS 
]wo C»pie<: Received 

AUG I 1906 



Cfiuyri^nj Entry 

ass C& 

CCP 







2-1 






Copyright, 1906, by 
DANIEL HENRY HOLMES 



THE TROW PBESS, NEW YORK 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

THE DOOR-MAT 1 

Preface 3 

Christmas Fairies . . . . . . . .4 

New Year Fairies 8 

Dame Darkness 13 

A Watch in the Night 15 

Handel's Largo 23 

How My Ship Came Home . . . . . .25 

Liebfrauensaft 27 

Esau 29 

Daniel 34 

Stabat Mater 37 

THE UNEXPRESSIVE SHE 41 

A Foreword 43 

I. Piscatrix 44 

II. Eve 46 

III. Lazarus 48 

IV. After-Glow 50 

V. Penelope 52 

VI. Ariel 54 

VII. Amaryllis 56 

VIII. Cinderella 58 

vii 



THE UNEXPRESSIVE SHE— Continued 

IX. Ephemera 

X. Circe . . 

XI. Pygmalion 

XII. Madonna . 

XIII. Psyche . 



PAGE 

60 
62 
64 
66 
68 



DECORATIVE PANELS FOR PAINTERS ONLY 71 

A Long Way After W. E. H 73 

Black on Gold 74 

White on Bronze 75 

White and Gold on Green 76 

Black on Silver . . . 77 

Silver on Blue 78 

White on Red Gold 79 



THE SEVEN CHORDS OF THE LYRE . . 81 

Preface 83 

Genoa 84 

Naples 85 

Venice 86 

Rome 87 

Florence 88 

Sienna 89 

Ravenna .90 

OTHER SONNETS 91 

In Memoriam J. H. P 93 

Azrael 94 

Fiat Lux 95 

viii 



OTHER SONNETS— Continued PAGE 

In the Cathedral at Sens 96 

Mors Non Ultima 97 

A Recipe 98 

The Holy Ladder 99 

The Value of a Little Water 100 

Mater Redemptrix 101 

Dawn on the Amicalola 102 

Palimpsests 103 

TRAVELLERS' NOTES 105 

Preface 107 

In the Dolomites 108 

Marlotte . .109 

Fontainebleau 110 

Cape Cod Ill 

On the Norman Coast 112 

On the Road to Pistoja 113 

Florence 114 

Prato 115 

In the Smoky Ridge of Georgia 116 

RONDEAUX, RONDELS, AND TRIOLETS . . 117 

Triolet. Preface 119 

On the Olden Time 120 

To an Old House 121 

Misozoic Rondeau 122 

Rondel 123 

Rondel 124 

ix 



RONDEAUX, ROXDELS, AND TRIOLETS— 

Continued PAQE 

Long-Legged Triolets 125 

The Master of the Gods 126 

As to the Idleness of Verse 127 



PINS AND NEEDLES 129 

The Empty Cradle 131 

A Charmer 132 

The Happy Fisherman 133 

Sortes Matrinioniales 134 

The Sea 135 

An Introit of Spring 136 

A Valentine 137 

Sweet Bells Jangled 138 

The Magic Mirror 139 

Neither Will I Condemn Thee 140 

The Master-Gods 141 

Requiescat . 142 

Edax Rerum 143 

A Hope 144 

"Curtain" 145 



THE DOOR-MAT 




wmM? h 







Let others ride the solemn hack, 
Or flaunt in naughty ' 'rickshaws; 

We're nothing but a PEDLAR'S PACK 
Of odds and ends and kickshaws. 

We make pretence to little worth, 
Our notes are young and thinnish; 

We claim no proud Castalian birth, 
Nor Master Craftsman's finish. 

All those who step John Milton's gait, 
Or follow Shakespeare's giants, 

Who Homerize or Virgilate, 
We don't expect for clients. 

But if a bored or tired man 
Should wish to kill a Sunday, 

We'll help him out as best we can; 
And a fig for Mrs. Grundy! 




CHRISTMAS FAIRIES 



Far up in the misty steeple, 

On a cold December night, 
Cluster all the small "good people," 

In their fairy veils bedight. 
Hanging to the ponderous hammer, 

Hanging to the bell's huge rim, 
They are ready for the clamor, 

They are waiting, silent, dim. 



II 

Sitting on the cross astraddle, 

Nearest to the stars above, 
Where there's scarcely room to waddle, 

For a portly turtle-dove — 
One is waiting fairy sentry, 

For a message from Old Time, 
To proclaim the Midnight's entry, 

Letting loose the Christmas chime. 
4 



Ill 

Every minute little fairies 

Furled in cloaks of cedar sheaves, 
Belted round with scarlet berries, 

With long courier boots of leaves, 
Mounted on some flying feather, 

Through the loophole peep and cry, 
"Christmas coming! Altogether 

Get you ready, toll, and fly!" 

IV 

Couriers from some distant belfry, 

When Midnight's already come 
With a snow-flake for a palfrey, 

On they fly from Spire to Dome, 
Bearing news of Joy and Gladness 

To the watching elves ahead; 
Chasing Grief and Shame and Badness 

From the path His foot will tread. 



With each warning, fairies flutter 

From the loophole up the spire, 
Fairies tiptoe on the gutter, 

Fairies climbing higher, higher, 
Nearer to their sentry, climbing, 

Waiting for the Christmas near, 
Ready for the Bell a-chiming, 

Ready for the Yule-log's cheer. 
5 



VI 

On his coming in the distance. 

Hear the whispered tinkling choir; 
Every fairy stoops and listens, 

Quick then, back within the spire, 
Round the bell to run and clamber, 

Forming one fantastic ring, 
Dimpled elves have caught the hammer, 

Start its slow and silent swing. 

VII 

At the last the long expected 

Stranger Christmas Midnight comes, 
With his beard all frost erected, 

Carried by carolling gnomes; 
With their snow-cloaks floating after, 

With the frost-work on their curls 
Like a picture peal of laughter, 

In a broken string of pearls. 

VIII 

Started in its midnight shelter, 

Then the bell begins to toll, 
And the fairies helter-skelter, 

Tumbling out of every hole, 
Through the midnight clouds they scamper, 

To the sleeping homes below, 
Bearing in a cloud for hamper, 

Holly branch and mistletoe. 
6 



IX 

Down the chimneys, up the gutters, 

Through the keyholes and the cracks, 
Fairies all in flirts and flutters, 

Skip and whisk with courtesying backs; 
Sweep the hearth and deck the fender 

With red berries and green thongs, 
Teach the kettles, fat and slender, 

How to purr their Christmas songs. 

X 

From man's eyelids, sorrow-laden, 

Brushing heavy tears away, 
Through the rosy dreams of maiden 

Strewing Dance and Roundelay; 
Baby stockings in each ingle, 

Stretch and yawn with elfin store; 
Fairies with the snow-flakes mingle, 

Puff! They go! The work is o'er. 




NEW YEAR FAIRIES 



Moonbeams trail across the altar, 

Stripped of gala trappings bare; 
Wan of wing, with feet that falter, 

Like the censor's breath of prayer; 
Where the monks at vespers lately 

Droned their masses through the nave, 
Midnight comes, serene and stately, 

Winter Midnight, pale and grave. 



II 

All the church asleep and solemn! 

And the mystic moments ebb; 
While the night from every column, 

As a spider spins her web, 
Weaves a veil from aisle to rafter, 

Grimy tapestries o'ercast, 
With the dreams of dim Hereafter, 

With the ghosts of hooded Past. 
8 



Ill 

All the church asleep and mourning! 

Yet for all the silence, hark! 
There is as a throb of warning 

In the pulses of the dark. 
Bodings which were voiceless yester. 

From the past awake and cry; 
This one night of St. Sylvester, 

When the waning year must die. 

IV 

Of a sudden, the brazen daughters, 

Rudely shaken from their sleep, 
With the voice of mighty waters 

Calling loud from deep to deep, 
Ding-dong madly from their prison, 

From the belfry overhead; 
For the baby year is risen, 

And the graybeard year is dead. 



At the signal, dainty fairies 

Steal from cosey nooks indoors, 
Goblins leave their gargoyle aeries, 

Busy pixies drop their chores; 
Through the cobwebs, from all corners 

Of the church, in silence come 
To the portals eerie mourners 

From the realm of Fairydom. 
9 



VI 

When the bells have tolled the Tiding, 

And the brazen sobs subside, 
On their hinges, hoarse with chiding, 

Lo! the portals open wide, 
And the ghostly legion marches 

Tiptoe, whisp'ring mystic prayers, 
Through the gaunt and hoary arches, 

To the distant chancel stairs. 

VII 

There the fairies, quiet, saintly, 

Bend the knees and clasp the hands, 
While strange perfumes filter faintly 

From the smouldering incense stands; 
And the dreaming organ falters, 

Like a wind through forest trees, 
Strains of unremembered psalters, 

And forgotten harmonies. 

VIII 

When in rites, unknown to mortals, 

Elfin worship has been said, 
Through the far-off open portals 

Comes the pageant of the dead. 
Calm and kingly lies the olden 

Year with snow on hair and beard, 
On a lofty bier, upholden: 

Four his bearers, grave and weird. 
10 



IX 

Spring, abashed at new caresses, 

Summer, brown, with flashing eyes, 
Autumn, flushed from red wine-presses, 

Winter, white and gemmed with ice; 
And behind them, Hours in mourning, 

Days grown gray, and Months which grieve 
Wet with tears of Dawn new-borning 

Draped in weeds of widowed Eve. 

X 

As the burial pageant passes, 

Wild white fires in censors glow, 
The organ starts from sleeping masses, 

Thrills of dirges, strains of woe; 
Climbing up through mad crescendoes, 

Till its pulses thrill the nave, 
While the moonlight through the windows 

Leaps and shatters like a wave. 

XI 

When the nave is reached the maiden 

Bearers set aground the bier, 
While faint voices, sorrow-laden, 

Chant a requiem for the year; 
Goblin sextons have uplifted 

From the flags the burial-stone; 
Thus far has the pageant drifted, 

Lo! the pilgrimage is done. 
11 



XII 

Tender hands, in loving-kindness, 

Gently help the kingly dead 
Down into the solemn blindness 

Of his everlasting bed. 
Priest there is none, black, to follow. 

Book in hand to chant his loss. 
But upon the graven hollow 

Falls the shadow of the cross. 

XIII 

Then the stone uplifted crashes 

Back to its appointed place; 
Peace and Mercy to his ashes. 

To his endless slumber Grace. 
Through the dark and distant portal: 

Through the silence into night. 
Slowly melt the dim Immortals. 

As a lunar rainbow might. 

XIV 

All is over! through the chapel 

Scarves of moonbeams faintly trail. 
Which the fretted archways dapple 

Like an angel's gala veil; 
All is done! Compassionately 

Shadows walk the silent nave; 
Only midnight, still and stately, 

Only Winter, pale and grave. 
1-2 



DAME DARKNESS 

Dame Darkness sits in her hiding-place, 
The quietest nook in the ingle; 

Morning and even, day out, day in, 
Where the crickets chirp and the spiders spin, 
Watching the blue smoke curl and lace, 
And the gold sparks snap and jingle. 

For a cheering look at the ripe red blaze, 
And a stretch on the rough, black benches, 
From winter snow and summer rain, 
Folk come in, then off again, 
While the humdrum kitchen goes its ways, 
With clatter of pans and wenches. 

But she never speaks and she never stirs: 
Though her hand is as soft as a mother's, 

Though her voice is sweet as the voice of a bride, 
She is passing shy, and fain will hide, 
Till perchance it happen this lover of hers 
Is left all alone by others. 
13 



And then she slips from her chimney-nook 
To stand at his shoulder — unbidden 

She lays on his brows her blessing palms, 
And sings in a voice that soothes and calms; 
But even then he may not look 

On her face, for she keeps it hidden. 

Her songs are only monotonous songs, 
Dead of tune and of faded glories; 

Her tales are worn with much telling, and gray 
With dust of the years that have crumbled away 
But ah! how the heart of her lover longs 
For the olden songs and stories; 



As, groping and halt, her voice totters along, 
Half forgets and half remembers, 

As the dear blind guide goes feeling her way 
The dreary To-day is no longer To-day, 
For his dead are alive again in the song, 
And come out to him from the embers. 



Ah! laugh who will, that he sits apart, 
By the hour, this graybeard lover; 

When a man has lived a lifelong through 
In the newest song, there is nothing new, 
And olden songs go best to the heart, 
As Dame Darkness sings them over. 



14 



A WATCH IN THE NIGHT 



I have been looking at the Night 
With eyes grown strangely blind, 

A pall of darkness muffles sight, 
No promise shines behind. 

The blue has molten into black, 
And where the moon should be 

Pale Sorrow walks the milky track 
Which spans Immensity. 

The Stars, the winged Stars of Light 

With feet in jewels shod, 
Now hang the lashes of Night 

Like misty tears of God. 

There is no light in anything 

For me, no hope thereof, 
For lo! my love lies sorrowing 

And has no care for Love. 
15 



n 

From the deep of her sorrow my darling cries 

For comfort that will not come, 
And I must stand with averted eyes — 

As a stranger stands — and dumb; 

I who had given my dreamed-of Fame, 

My Life, and all for her sake, 
Must hide my love, as a thing of shame, 

And hush my heart, though it break. 

Ah! were it but the time to be bold, 

Had I the right to be true, 
I should take her close in my arms and fold 

Her sorrow about us two; 

I should hold her close to my heart and wring 

The bitterness from her soul — 
As a Hindoo sucks an adder's sting, 

With my lips would I make her whole. 



Ill 

Alas! it were all one to me 

If daylight come or shadow rise; 

All, all is dark, I cannot see 

For the tears in my darling's eyes. 
16 



IV 

I seem as one in a cave, who cowers 

In the silence of utter Night, 
All count is lost of the slow-foot hours, 

All recollection of Light; 

With eyes burnt blind, with ears grown numb 

As in answer to his calls, 
The baying echoes sullenly come, 

As rumbling waterfalls. 

Could I but feel her — if I might 
Be assured of her presence near, 

I could endure this blindfold Night, 
And hold its silence dear. 



I will be patient in despite 

Of all which must be born, 
And bear the heaviness of Night, 

In hope of coming Morn. 

Yea, patient as the Hindoo priest, 
Whose great wide eyes grow blind 

For watching through the blue-black East 
The Light that lives behind. 

I will be patient, hoard my tears, 

And hold my grief unsaid, 
Lest when my Joy with morning nears 

I have no tears to shed. 
17 



VI 

The desert stretches bare and brown! 

Like a scourge in demon's hands, 
The angry yellow sun beats down 

Upon the hissing sands. 

Reel on, thou footsore traveller! 

In the waste of sand, alone, 
With flesh athirst for spring-water, 

And parched to the bone. 

God! how blest thy well-water! 
How sweet and pure her eyes! 

Let me but touch my lips to her, 
And keep thy Paradise! 

VII 

1 saw her pass, her head bowed down, 
With falling hands, and lingering feet, 

In trailing veil, and morning gown, 
That cloaked her as a winding-sheet; 

I could not make her features out, 
I could not see her golden hair, 

For black her garments hung about, 
And hooded her with spectral wear; 

And yet I knew her — in my flesh 
And soul I knew her — for her train 

An instant touched me, and afresh 
My heart burst into sudden pain. 
18 



VIII 

There was a voice which sang, that night, 
Far off like the drone of chimes, 

A burden faint as a dream in white, 
And wistful as olden times. 

It lingered: then at last was still, 
Like a silken skein unwound, 

And silence followed, save that thrill 
In the air, which shadows sound. 

But as it melted Heavenward, 

I knew it in my soul, 
The long last sob of the silver chord, 

The ring of the golden bowl. 



IX 

What have you now to say to me, 
You wise old Stars, whose still 

Far eyes have stayed my agony, 
And helped me weep my fill? 

Your eyes are wet, and yet it seems 
As if the pain were gone. . . . 

Has Sorrow vanished with the dreams? 
Are we so near to Dawn? 
19 



X 

It is not morning? No — not yet; 

But in the distant Eastern night, 
Beyond those hills' black parapet, 

There is the blossom of a light. 

It is not morning; but the stars 

Are blinking, weary with the watch. 

A breath of air is awake, and mars 
The sodden silence with its catch. 

It is not morning; all is dark! 

And yet my soul, benumbed where it lay, 
As children stir to peer and hark, 

Has felt the call of coming Day. 



XI 

I had no words to say my pain, 

How shall I sing my joy? 
Alas! that words should be so vain, 

And verse but an idler's toy! 

When Joy shall come — for come it will, 

In its appointed time — 
Were it not best the lips be still, 

Than lisp a foolish rhyme? 
20 



Say nothing, and my treasure keep 

By language undefiled, 
Content that I can simply weep 

For Happiness, as a child. 



XII 

To a ragged veil the shadows wear 

Across the gate of Dreams, 
Which Dawn repels, with flashing hair, 

And crimson scarf of beams. 

The hooded hills repeat the light, 

In flush of red and gold, 
And Heaviness, which endured the night, 

Is still, as a tale that is told. 

What though my heart is dulled and wet 
With the sorrow now gone past, 

Is Earth not rippling with dewfall yet, 
Though Day has come at last? 

My heart fills full of the joyful rays, 
As a cup with laughing wine: 

And opens wide to the crystal maze 
Where the singing sunbeams shine. 
21 



XIII 

Come to me, darling, the fields are clad 

In sunshine and summer air, 
The world is glad, as I am glad, 

And fair as thou art fair. 

Come to me! through this Virgin "World 

We will walk the ways of love, 
With the youth of the season about us furled, 

And the smile of the sun above. 

My heart and the woods are fresh again, 
With the blooming of songs and flowers. 

Come to me, darling! and leave thy pain 
For this golden world, which is ours. 




T^fTB^^^^^ 




9 



22 



HANDEL'S LARGO 

Lord, my God! It is Thy will 
That this, my love, be dead; 

My haggard eyes have wept their fill, 
My very heart is shed. 

1 sorrow till I can no more, 
And numb have grown at last; 

For now the bitterness is o'er, 
The sting of pain is past. 

How she was loved, I had, Thou know'st, 

No words to tell it in, 
I loved her till it seemed almost 

Such worship was a sin. 

She was the crown of life to me, 

My love, my sun, my air; 
More than I ever hoped of Thee, 

In answer to my prayer. 

The purest soul that ever fell 

To walk this earth apace, 
It had made Paradise of Hell, 

To look upon her face. 
23 



A jealous God in truth Thou art, 

I loved her all too well, 
And as a bolt upon my heart 

Thy sore displeasure fell. 

And yet I have nor thought nor said 
An angry word, not one — 

O God! Thy name be hallowed! 
Thy holy will be done! 

Vouchsafe but this, my poor request: 
When Thou hast born her far 

To golden meadows of the Blest, 
In some flamboyant star, 

When cleansed of this Earth of ours, 

Its weariness and stain, 
Through silver fields of lily-flowers, 

An angel once again, 

In splendor of her robes of light, 

In flash of golden wings, 
She walks triumphant in Thy sight, 

With red rose mouth that sings, 

Let not the Past be all forgot! 

Let not her soul forbear 
In wilderment, and answer not 

An echo to my prayer; 

And I will humbly bow me low, 
And bless Thy ruthless will; 

Do Thou but let her hear and know 
How dear I love her still. 

24 



HOW MY SHIP CAME HOME 

It was a sere and yellow day, 

In the olden half of the year, 
A sodden mist hung on the bay, 

The sob of the sea was near. 

The tide slipped out, its sparkle blurred, 

Its voice grown shrill and old, 
And with the breeze of a sudden stirred 

An acrid smell of mould. 

Half seen on the edge of the farther coast, 
Where the fog- veil wears to a shred, 

New York loomed ominous, like the ghost 
Of a city long since dead. 

Toward me as I stood in wait, 
Far out on the wave-eaten pier, 

Across the distant, dim sea-gate, 
A shadowy ship drew near. 

A faint and uncouth bulk begrimed 
With smoke and the rust of foam, 

Which swam so sorely, as I timed 
Its laggard coming home. 
25 



And in a freak there came to me 

A scene of the legend days, 
When kings went downward to the sea, 

In triumph song of praise; 

To kneel exultant on the sands, 

While belted deep in foam 
Their priests held high their blessing hands, 

For that the ships come home: 

The slow and sated ships of prey, 
With wide white wings unfurled, 

Within whose blood-dyed bellies lay 
The ransom of a world. 

WTien through the mists that blur and warp 

The steamer drawing near, 
A figure suddenly grew sharp, 

A radiant face grew clear. 

Oh, thou who since hast grown to be 

My hope and comforter, 
A gift more rich and rare to me 

Than ships of gold and myrrh, 

Sweet face that broke as a sun ashine 

That autumn monochrome, 
I knew when first thine eyes met mine 

It was my ship come home. 



26 






LIEBFRAUENSAFT 

A stranger's room, an empty room, 
The door ajar, the curtains close. 

A restful refuge? Ah! to whom? 

Perhaps a sacred home? But whose? 

Apart from fire-light, all is gloom, 
And all is silence save the clock. 

A stranger's room, an empty room, 
Its door ajar, its clew alock. 



A table littered crazily 

With random books and vagrant flowers, 
An arm-chair yawning lazily, 

An arm-chair used to quiet hours; 

An easel here, a bracket there, 

While yonder shimmering mirrors loom. . 
A room you might see anywhere, 

An empty room, a stranger's room. 
27 



And yet o'er all — unheard — unseen — 
A subtle meaning in the air 

Reveals to him whose scent is keen 
A woman's presence lingers there. 

And so 'tis with the Poet's soul; 

From wildest song to deepest prayer, 
One subtle meaning scents the whole — 

A woman's memory lingers there. 




28 



ESAU 

From the East where Jabbok and Jordan meet, 
The sun springs on to the desert's brink; 

Of a sudden, beneath his red young feet, 
The sombre waste of the sands is pink. 

On the farther bank, under swinging palms, 
Where the rank green life of the river sings, 

Like a flock of gulls which Sleep becalms, 
A camp lies poised on tented wings. 

But here, on the desert side, is seen, 
Against the sands as an etching, clear, 

One motionless figure cut sharp and clean, 
A gaunt hairy man in shepherd's gear. 

His tangled beard and matted hair 

Are red as brass, and his limbs and throat. 

Where the ragged goatskin leaves them bare, 
Shine red as the plush of a panther's coat. 

And yet for all he is furred like a beast. 

In the set of head, in the body's pose, 
Resplends a faith unknown to the priest, 

And greater courage than warrior knows. 
29 



He, the elder born to a king's estate, 

And heir to the blessing which God fulfils, 

In the huddled flocks at his father's gate, 
And the roving herds on a thousand hills; 

On the eve of his ripening chiefdom spoiled 
Of his birthright: stripped by a cozening knave 

Of all his greatness; by trickery foiled 
Of the blind last blessing his father gave! 

A filcher sneaks to the prince's place, 

And the pure skies smile on the lucky thief, 

While the heir goes forth with averted face, 
A man of sorrow and acquaint with grief. 

Oh, the bitterness of the outer dark, 

And the barren waste of the ways he trod; 

What wonder the banished heart grew stark 
With hate of his fellow, and wrath of God! 

For this was God's own work: laid down 
In infinite Wisdom and Truth sublime, 

His Justice smiles on the trick of a clown, 
His Law confirms a fraternal crime. 

So years have passed; he has waited long 
In sorrow and silence more bitter than tears, 

But a reckoning comes if a man be strong, 
The time is come — his vengeance nears. 
30 






Across the river, at last the camp, 

At the call of morning, springs from its sleep, 
With hollas of herdsman and cattle's stamp, 

With flirt of tents, and the bleat of sheep. 

And slowly straggling down to the ford, 
Where silver waters in ripples hum, 

The hosts of Jacob, beloved of the Lord, 
With pageantry vast and ungainly, come. 

Yea, herd on herd, and flock after flock, 
Unnumbered as the sands of the shore, 

And hulking droves of camels which rock 
Beneath their burden of precious store; 

While well protected, far in the rear — 

From the journey's peril now pressing hard, 

The wives, bondwomen, and children near 
In creaking chariots, which spearsmen guard. 

And in the van of his household, grown 

Much changed from the one once loved so well, 

As beseems a chieftain, walking alone, 
He sees the supplanter, Israel. 

Yea, his time is coming. The masses pour 

Across the ford to the higher lands 
In a jumbled stream, and halt before 

The mound, where the motionless figure stands. 
31 



And through his hosts, up the shelving sands, 
The chieftain comes to the meeting-place 

With head held low and imploring hands, 
To the shepherd's feet, and falls on his face. 

For a moment the strong, sure eyes that looked 
In the face of sorrow nor ever flinched, 

Fall stern on this man, in grovelling crook' d — 
For a moment the hairy hands have clinched. 

Then meaning comes as sight to the blind, 
As a curtain rent in twain, and he hears 

A voice cry aloud in his ear, behind 
The pitiless silence of former years: 

"Lo ! this is He I have chosen to rule 

All things of the earth which have being and live, 

I have made My land this man's footstool, 
I have given him all which God can give. 

" His flocks have I made to outnumber the sands, 
I have covered My hills with his countless herds, 

I have wrought his greatness with Mine own hands, 
I have marked his ways with Mine own words. 

" I gave him Leah the wife of his home, 
I gave him Rachel the bride of his soul, 

That he might stand in all time to come, 

In the flesh, in the spirit, a king made whole; 
32 









" But Sleep which closes the just man's eyes 
With soft pure hands, he has never seen. 

His soul is black with the olden lies, 

And Peace may not dwell in a heart unclean. 

" But thou whose flesh and soul I have tried, 
As virgin gold in the furnace flame, 

Whom I made to walk dark ways, beside 
Blind grief, and hand in hand with shame, 

" Till in flesh and soul thou art cleansed of all 
Base manhood, and tempered strong and true, 

Thou Son of Mine Anger, on thee I call — 
Do thou this work which I may not do." 

He hears, and the clinched red hands unclasp, 
The hard stern eyes grow suddenly sweet. 

He stoops, and lifts in his hairy grasp 
The prostrate brother beneath his feet. 

So stands Red Esau — the Pardoner — etched 
Upon the sands, at the sun's new birth, 

With head uplifted, and arms outstretched. . . . 
The Cross, as first it was seen on the Earth. 




DANIEL 



Like a condor's wings, in their huge, still sweep, 

The brazen portals asunder unfold, 
The lurid flare of the torches creep, 

Like serpent tongues, through the Lion's Hold. 

A hurtle of arms as the soldiers halt, 
A hissing curse from the hungry priests, 

Then, the bolts ring shrill on the grim basalt, 
And the Prophet stands at bay with the beasts. 

The viscous walls of the dungeon, asweat 
With blood, and with rotting things alight, 

Rise sheer to their far-away parapet, 
In the hollow black of tropical night. 

In the core of the pit, upon his breast 

With folded arms — Ins feet unshod, 
His face uplift to the Stars of Rest 

He stands alone, and looks at God. 

He can hope no ruth, he will crave no grace, 
Let them do their worst, he is well content, 

And he stares, with Death grinning in Ins face, 
With eyes unflinching, with brows unbent. 
34 



About the walls, like a noiseless tide, 

In foam-flecked eddies that fade and loom, 

The lissome shadows unceasing glide: 

They are close at hand, the slaves of Doom. 

In whirls imperceptibly narrowing — 

The tightening cords of an evil dream — 

Around him winds, an ominous ring 

With fangs that glisten, and eyes that gleam. 

Their bellies grate on the fat, dank sands! 

Let the King despair! Let the Priests rejoice! 
For the end is near! Of a sudden, the hands 

Of the Prophet fall, and he lifts his voice: 

"Thou Great, Grim God of Israel! 

Thou knowest how true I have served Thee, Lord i 
I have walked Thy ways, when all others fell, 

I have borne Thy shield, I have bared Thy sword. 

" The ungodly have staked their might against mine: 
From the deep I call! Wilt Thou hear me now? 

Though Death were mine, yet Shame were Thine, 
Make bare Thine arm in our business, Thou! 

"And ye! Ye who fatten of tears and blood! 

Who are craving ever, insatiate! 
Who have drunk of Shame, till you found it good, 

Ye Spawn of Hell! Ye tools of Fate! 
35 



" I who know you well, who have known you long, 
I spurn your anger with scornful heel; 

Your fangs and claws are sharp and strong, 
But my Soul is Rock, and my Will is Steel. 

" Down with your heads, as I call your names! 

Thou lion, Craft, with the hoary mane! 
Thou, Pride, who wert forged with claws of flames! 

Thou Greed, who wert littered of Gold and Gain! 

"Down, Sloth! Down, Doubt, to thy bed of mire! 

Thou and thy twin whelps, Lie and Fear! 
Thou lioness Lust, with thy throat afire! 

Down, I say! I am Master here." 

As the voice soars upward on wings of wrath, 
The ceaseless circles grow slowly still; 

And the monsters cower on their blood-stained path: 
For Man is King, if he speak his Will. 

Their limbs stretch huge and strain o'er the sands, 
Till their breaths pant hot on his garments' fold, 

They lick the spot where the Prophet stands 
Erect, with implacable arms extolled. 




STABAT MATER 

It was the middle night, and snowing sore. 
Outdoors, there was no light, and all lay black, 
But for the fevered luscence of the snow, 
And hidden shafts of angry yellow fire 
With every yawning of some random door: 
A night of woful, weary barrenness. 

Indoors, in sullen discipline proceeds 

The rugged routine of the Station-House : 

The watchmen, cursing that the night was raw, 

The sergeants, waiting their relief, the crowd 

Of blinking idlers huddled round the stove — 

At rest dejectedly; the constable 

In charge, asleep upon the record, smeared 

With crimes, and sins, and moral leprosies, 

And in the background, where grim gratings catch 

On bright-worn steel the flicker of the lamp, 

Strange forms and shadows, prowling to and fro, 

Like noiseless eddies of a fretful tide, 

Or caged beasts of prey, with hungry eyes, 

One sat acrouch in a corner, not within 
The bars, yet where the shade was merciful 
And partly cloaked her infamy from sight; 

37 



A haggard thing, unnoticed and absorbed. 

Her ragged gown fell limply as she sat 

With shawl drawn taut across her breast, her hands 

Like evil claws, turned upward in her lap, 

In the easy pose of practised beggary; 

Her hair, dishevelled, hung about her neck; 

The lips and eyelids twitched, unused to light, 

While in the bleared and dimly conscious eyes 

There glowed the pathos of an utter loss. 

What was she? "Vagrant" — so the record read. 

Alas! this was not all they knew of her, 

But in rough charity these men had used, 

Of all her nameless titles, one that was 

Not abject utterly, to brand her with. 

A sorry sight, this fallen creature: one 

To sadden man of his Humanity. 

Just then the door swung wide, and from without, 

With quick, sharp stamp of boot, and shaggy shake 

Of spattered great-coat, loomed into the room 

A huge patrolman, bearded to the eyes 

With icicles, who bore with clumsy care 

A plump, round ball of deftly fastened wraps, 

Down in the depths of which a baby slept, 

And stalking to the desk, laid tenderly 

His burden down; then straightened up and grinned. 

The chief, who sprawled across the book, awoke 
And bared his teeth with something like a smile, 
While all who waited, growling round the room, 
Came crowding up, with eager faces, whence 



Strange lights of tenderness and pity shone, 
About the tiny visitor asleep. 
And even o'er the gloom, behind the bars, 
Uncouth in homage, sudden stillness fell. 

There were no questions asked how came it there, 

How was it found adrift upon the town, 

A flower fresh-dropped from Heaven, and smelling 

sweet 
Of God and purity; an offshoot of debauch, 
Of crime perhaps, as tender violets shoot 
From nameless things that rot in open air. 

It may have been the close, foul air which hung 
Upon the room like a dragon's breath, or else 
The clumsy tenderness of great rough hands, 
But from its sleep, the last long draught of peace, 
The baby started blinking, and gave voice 
In piping little cries, that fluttered lost 
In that hoarse Babel of distracted men. 

No one had thought there was a nurse at hand; 
But at the cries, the squalid thing which sat 
Far in the corner, heedless, as one drunk 
With the dull lethargy of hopeless Shame, 
Sprang to her feet, alive again, and walked 
With steady gait, with placid wave of hands, 
Commanding all to stand aside for her, 
And with the majesty of Motherhood 
Took to her trained arms the foundling, bared 
Her bosom, which was all of womanhood 

39 



Her life had left her. As the baby closed 

With ravenous pink fingers on the breast, 

She looked around upon the men who stood 

Unconsciously respectful, with a smile 

That came through tears, like some white distant light- 

An echo from a past which had been pure. 

Her squalor left her, even shame was gone, 
She stood redeemed — a Woman once again; 
A child had cleansed her, for a time, at least. 




^mm^ 



-40 



THE UNEXPRESSIVE SHE 



A FOREWORD 

"Art is but Nature, seen" — says Zola — 
" Through a temperament! " Good man! 

Plain as the nose on your face . . . et voila! 
Let us adapt this — if we can. 

There is a thing than Art more troublesome: 
Woman, forsooth! for some have wist 

She is unique; some, a world; and double, some; 
Woman is x, says the Algebrist. 

Test the rule, with strictness Newtonic; 

Problem's, like nuts, must be cracked by rote: 
Woman is Art, which Nature ironic 

Hides from Man, in a petticoat. 





PISCATRIX 

One morning when Spring was in her teens, 

A morn to a poet's wishing, 
All tinted in delicate pinks and greens, 

Miss Bessie and I went fishing. 

I in my rough and easy clothes, 

With my face at the sun tan's mercy, 

She with her hat tipped down to her nose, 
And her nose tipped vice versa. 

I with my rod, my reel, and my hooks, 
And a hamper for luncheon recesses, 

She with the bait of her comely looks, 
And the seine of her golden tresses. 



So we sat us down on the sunny dike, 
Where the white pond-lilies teeter, 

And I went to fishing, like quaint old Ike, 
And she like Simon Peter. 
44 



All the noon I lay in the light of her eyes, 
And dreamily watched and waited, 

But the fish were cunning and would not rise, 
And the baiter alone was baited. 

So when the time for departure came, 
My bag hung flat as a flounder, 

But Bessie had neatly hooked her game — 
A hundred-and-fifty-pounder. 



45 



II 



EVE 



On the hill-side where the pines grow wide, 
And grass in the sunshine dapples, 

We strolled at random one even-tide, 
Seeking the first May-apples. 

She was a child, yet the soul whereof 
On the brink of womanhood hovers, 

Not over-young to have dreamed of love, 
Too young to have thought of lovers. 

And I was a lad who thought him manned 
By big rough voice and bearing; 

But who dreamed to squeeze a woman's hand 
The utmost bounds of daring. 

From good old jacket-and-pinafore days 
We had grown, we two together, 

To look to each other for blame or praise, 
Without asking why or whether. 

46 



We had never dreamed of a ehaperone, 

Yet then, without any reason, 
We felt half shy that we were alone; 

There was something wrong with the season. 

We had not spoken while strolling along, 

But for all our lips were idle 
My heart beat time to a strange new song, 

And her eyes were soft and bridal. 

We stooped: in the crook of a grim old root, 

A green-hooded apple beckoned, 
The time was ripe for forbidden fruit, 

And old Adam within me wakened. 

Our fingers met, our lips came close, 

And lo! the secret abiding! 
We found where the fruit of knowledge grows, 

That rascal Cupid, hiding. 



47 



Ill 



LAZARUS 

On the old piazza, o'erlooking the sands, 

We were sitting alone in shadow; 
It was winter time, but in Florida lands 

Even winter is El Dorado. 

It was late — the light lay on the seas 

Like a sleeping goddess's tresses, 
And all was still but moss on the trees, 

Athrill with susurrant caresses. 

She was crooning a half-forgotten song 
Which her negro mammy had taught her; 

And there came to me a shadowy throng 
Of memories over the water. 

They were of a night — such a night as this, 

WTien, unlearned in life and lying, 
Two children dreamed they had pledged in a kiss 

A love that should know no dying. 

Five years ago, as the calendar goes, 

Yet it seemed vast shoreless ages, 
Since we sat together, still and close, 

And turned the marvellous pages. 
48 



The world was afar, our love was fair. . . . 

We were children and knew no better. 
And now she's engaged to a millionnaire, 

And I am trying "belles-lettres." 

We had talked it over, both heart-whole, 
When we first had met that morning, 

And had laughed: "Amen! God have its soul! 
Tins love which had died a-borning. 

But ghosts will walk in the haunting hours, 
And the hidden graves grow claimant, 

So it came to pass that this love of ours 
Arose in its burial raiment. 

To-day had vanished before its spell, 
I forgot I had ceased to love her; 

And she — well, her head on my shoulder fell, 
And we lived our dead love over. 



49 



IV 



AFTER-GLOW 

The season had closed as seasons will, 
With the grand gala supper and German: 

Now the lights were out, the music still. . . 
The feast had shrunk to a sermon. 

In the air, sweet-scented with coming dawn, 
We were walking, we two, the last time, 

The moon-flecked path across the lawn, 
Where we used to stroll for pastime. 

It was a silent and halting walk, 

This walk that should know no morrow; 

It was late, and we, too tired to talk, 
Was it really fatigue, or sorrow ? 

Her hand hung hstless upon my arm, 
And my heart was busy, thereunder, 

Recording her every trick and charm; 
What was hers at work on, I wonder? 

We had grown to know each other so well 
In the mountains, where, willy-nilly, 

The soul must cast its conventional shell, 
And lounge en deshabille. 
50 



An acquaintance barely six weeks old! 

But the stiffest acquaintance mellows 
In Virginian summer all blue and gold! 

We had come to be grown playfellows; 

Such playmates as fairy-tales prattle of, 
Unconscious of guile and scheming, 

Who had never spoken — nay, thought of love, 
In our sweet midsummer's dreaming. 

It was over. We came to her end of the lawn, 
And parted — as sister and brother; 

I wandered back with the dream now gone, 
And knew we had loved each other. 



51 



PENELOPE 

By the open window she sat intent, 
In the waning shimmer of daylight, 

An old pastel which years have blent 
To a monochrome of gray light. 

There was nothing striking about her dress, 
Nothing salient about her beauty, 

In outline faint as Happiness, 
In color sober as Duty. 

Her eyes, where coming shadows dawn, 

And dying sunshine lingers, 
Alone spake forth as she knitted on, 

With soft, swift, silent fingers. 

And oh, the tale those sweet eyes told, 
To the rhythm of her placid motion, 

Like the songs the singing stars unfold 
From the restless dreams of ocean. 

They told of radiant far-away lands, 
Where Love still walked, a maiden 

With brows unkissed, and folded hands 
Across a bosom flower-laden. 
52 



No worldly creeds to smear it o'er, 

No social racks to dwarf it, 
A love well worth the striving for, 

Though life itself the forfeit. 

How welcome had it been to me, 
With all its griefs and dangers! 

It might have been or still might be; 
Alas! We were only strangers. 

And so my hungry fancy sped, 

When her knitting came untoward, 

A knot — snap! went the silken thread, 
The magical eyes were lowered. 

Penelope's veil unravelled came, 

And my golden dream lay shattered; 
She was nothing now but a worthy dame 
At work on . . . Pshaw! what mattered! 



53 



XI 



ARIEL 

Ox a bowlder kissed by the sun and foam 

We were lazily looking after 
The fishing-smacks, as they waddled home 

On waters atkrill with laughter. 

Beneath us the surf came wooing the sand. 

With the wordless song of the sirens; 
And the redolent south-wind walked the land 

Like the virgin Haydee of Byron's. 

But sweet as it was and musical. 

This fresh eclogue of the water. 
More tunefully tender was she than all. 

My girl, this Ocean-daughter. 

With eyes where the blue gTows pale or strong. 
As the sea's between deeps and shallows, 

And lips where a smile will leap to a song, 
Like the burst of a crimson aloes. 

So I turned from the Blue, which allures and befools. 

In its very play so stormy, 
To the restful depths of the stainless pools. 

Where her soul lay playing before me. 

.54 



And I fancied no love born in tainted haunts 

May mirror in them its fashion, 
No man durst sully these crystal fonts 

With the lees of an earthly passion. 

Yet a time must come when her soul will wake 
To love, and the pain of its thralling, 

Will rise, as Undine came from her lake, 
At a random idler's calling. 

And then — well then I shall try to forget 
That she made me remember heaven. . . . 

But pshaw! This is all conjecture yet, 
For the little one's only seven. 



55 



VII 

AMARYLLIS 

The soughing boughs went to and fro, 
Like fans in a drowsy measure, 

Across the glen where we lolled, we two, 
One day of golden leisure. 

The droning humdrum Every-day 
Had been growing dull and duller, 

Till it melted, as hills melt far away, 
In a haze of tender color. 

The place was secluded; the time ripe noon; 

No fear of a kill- joy comer. 
In the holy fragrance of full-blown June, 

We two were alone with Summer. 

About us the wild-flowers nodded in flocks, 

Telling each other stories, 
Or gossiped about the fit of their frocks, 

Or the set of their yellow glories. 

I lay full length in the grass, grown deep, 
And followed with jealous aching 

The madcap sunbeams play bopeep 
With the halo her hair was making. 
56 



I felt all loved her, this Child of the Wood, 
That it was because she was present 

The flowers smelled sweet, the breezes wooed, 
And the cooling shade was pleasant. 

And I, who had never found heart to tell 

The dreams I had builded of her, 
Grew bold with these things, winch wooed so well, 
And learned how to play the lover. 

Need the song be sung and the sequel told? 

The wind that played with the lilies 
Was laughing then as it laughed of old 

At the story of Amaryllis. 



m 



VIII 

CINDERELLA 

The days had grizzled as Summer died, 
And that day was its lone last mourner, 

The skies themselves were transmogrified 
From our dreamy chimney corner, 

Where under a mantel a century old, 
On a hearth long vigils made hoary, 

A wood-fire sketched in crimson and gold 
The scenes of a wonderful story. 

I lounged in a chair, most nobly planned 
For the expanse of Falstaff's surcingle, 

And upon a tabouret, close to my hand, 
Sat the guardian sprite of the ingle. 

A queer little figure, demure, all in gray, 
So still with her downward lashes, 

She seemed a puff of the smoke astray 
From its home, deep under the ashes. 

Was it the burden the green logs sang? 

Or the pictures builded of embers? 
Was it the mystic meanings which hang 

Like ghosts about dead Novembers? 
58 



I cannot say, but there seemed to rise, 

From the depths where the flame lay glassy, 

In strange old metres and sceneries, 
The tale of this musing lassie; 

Till this odd little midget, so still and gray, 
From the gulf in the embers yawning 

Came forth, a creature as splendid as Day, 
In the light of love, new dawning. 

The ashes in gloaming had done it all, 

And here's an end to the story: 
At the fairy godmother Fancy's call 

Cinderella puts on her glory. 



59 



IX 



EPHEMERA 

The breeze was as soft as a lover who sues, 
On the rocks where the surf came breaking. 

We two were alone, and the fiend was loose — 
? Twas a gala night for love-making; 

I fresh from Bonn and the cults thereof. 

TN no had grown an unbeliever. 
A pathologist who considered love 

As a sort of malignant fever; 

And she. that paragon friend of friends. 

A society belle in vacation. 
With the world and the flesh at her finger-ends. 

And the devil himself at flirtation. 

We were sitting. I think I have said before. 

Alone in the sweet-scented weather; 
And it seemed as if the sea and the shore 

With my lady were leagued together. 

For it came to pass (who has known the sea. 

Or the spell of a woman's presence, 
Will understand) there came over me 

A thirst for rejuvenescence. 
60 



Leander swam the moonlit seas, 
Orlando roamed the garden. . . . 

I came to doubt Philosophy's 
Subservience as a warden; 

If all things but Youth and Love are vain, 
Such topics alone really bardic, 

Why be the exception, and why remain 
A coelebs a-glycocardic ? 1 

She lay shut-eyed, and lips apart, 
So fair on the granite's bistre, 

I forgot her love was an actress's part, 
I forgot my degree! and kissed her. 

I knew it must pass in a twinkling away, 
I felt that health was not in it, 

Yet, for all we met as strangers next day, 
We had really loved, a minute. 

1 Medico-Greek = Without a sweetheart. 



61 



CIRCE 

In the eerie wake of the white moonbeams 

Through the dim conservatory 
The flowers lay sleeping their feverish dreams 

Of tropical shame and glory; 

For the air was filmy with fragrant breath, 
Like a veil wrought in bridal laces, 

And the light shone strange as light beyond death, 
With the glow of their straining faces. 

On a rustic seat, with brows close pressed 
To the moss where the sheen fell chilly, 

With drooping shoulders and panting breath, 
She lay, like a sun-sick lily. 

Through the open windows, all glaze and blare, 
Through the palm-trees' swaying curtain, 

With tinkle and hop of a country fair 
Came music in bursts uncertain. 

There was nothing strange in our being there, 

Nothing tragic as in romances, 
We were only tired and fain of fresh air, 

And had come to rest between dances. 



But for all her listless and graceful pose, 
There was something more than languor 

In the deep green eyes that close and unclose, 
Like a hungry panther's in anger. 

A subtle spell as of poisoned wine 

Fell from them upon me slowly, 
Till Sin came forth in robes divine, 

And Shame itself grew holy. 

The world had triumphed, the flesh had won, 
While the deep green eyes still flash on. . . 

My soul went down like a sorrowing sun 
In a turgid sea of passion. 

The music stopped just then, and the crowd 
Came pouring, a turbulent Babel: 

Where was Circe now? The haziest cloud 
In the shadow realms of Fable. 



63 



XI 



PYGMALION 

It was coming night; on the hearth of stone 

The weary fire, grown fainting, 
Cast over the room a sober red tone, 

Like the glow of an olden painting. 

Without, bleak winds and gray light swept 
The hill-sides shrunken and lonely; 

But the curtains were drawn, within doors slept 
Shy darkness and silence only. 

And yet not only, for indistinct 
As the lights and shadows wrestled, 

With wandering eyes and fingers linked, 
A shadowy woman nestled. 

One could trace at most the faint outline 
Of her figure, in darkness swallowed, 

But the face was a-shine — a face divine — 
With the pathos of Fancies hallowed. 
64 



There was pain in the eyes, but the pain nigh spent, 
Of a sorrow that soothes and blesses; 

And the parted lips were redolent 
With the scent of coming caresses. 

Such clinging there was and subtle grace 
In the meanings that hovered o'er her, 

That Love stole out of its hiding-place 
And cast my heart before her. 

Thump! Thump! A footstep in the hall; 

She rose — it was clear in a moment, 
She knew He was coming — and that is all 

Her longing alone in the gloam meant. 

Her love was there for the plucking, but not 

My hand, the hand she was craving; 
Pygmalion, I, the fatuous sot, 

In love with his marble graving. 



65 



XII 

MADONNA 

I stood in some old nave grown brown 

With shadows immemorial; 
Beneath huge pillars sweeping down 

Like pageantries historial, 

Toward the chancel where a priest 
As faint as a shadow stood droning, 

With shaking hands outspread to the East, 
The chant of unknown Atoning. 

So holy was the place and vast, 

That it seemed, as I looked and listened, 
As if my soul had come at last 

To a worship reviviscent. 

When from the outer light that shone, 

As a blessing from the portal, 
A woman came, absorbed and alone, 

In serenity more than mortal. 

It was not that her face was fair, 
And tenderly chaste her vesture, 

It was not that she seemed a prayer 
In her very gait and gesture; 
66 



It was not that the sunlight stole 

Through the stained glass and kissed her — 
As though some wandering vestal soul 

Had recognized a sister. 

But with her presence there awoke 

Of a sudden to keenest living, 
From prayer-worn stone and tear-stained oak, 

The perfume of Thanksgiving. 

She kneeled, and holy echoes rolled 

Through the church, the shadows parted — 

It seemed as though the Faith of old 
From its sleep of ages had started. 

And a child's belief, long numb and gray, 
As an insect webbed by a spider, 

Grew young again as I watched her pray, 
And I knelt like a child beside her. 



67 



XIII 



PSYCHE 



In the trysting time when coming night 

Meets day, his pilgrimage over, 
And lifts her mouth to the kiss of light, 

On the lips of her dying lover; 

When the panting landscape, flushed with fire, 

In declining color wavers, 
Like the after-thrill of a stricken lyre, 

The time for the plagal quavers; 

When silence steals upon the world 
On tiptoe, and strangely moulded 

Of shadowy pinions softly unfurled 
And sun-wings slowly folded; 

When unshapen pageants walk the clouds 

In the guise of fairy mummers, 
And woodlands hide under purple shrouds 

The livery of glowing summers; 

When scents all mellow, and scenes all merge, 

Into harmonies and gloaming, 
On the brink of day, on the shadows' verge, 

I saw my sweetheart coming. 
68 



Across a world that had held us estranged, 
In the noontide's glare and clamor 

I saw her coming with love unchanged 
Toward me through the glamour. 

Attired in sober robes of gray, 

A scarf her single adorning, 
But fair and pure as the breath of May, 

And glad as the face of Morning. 

Before her Space and Time fell past, 

As we slowly came together, 
We were heart to heart, my love, at last, 

In the tenderly melting weather. 

My arms were open — alas! in vain, 

There was nothing there but shadow — 

For she is off on the coast of Maine, 
And I am in Colorado. 




DECORATIVE PANELS 
FOR PAINTERS ONLY 



A LONG WAY AFTER W. E. H. 

Sons of the North-light, 
Up with your brushes! 
Children of Pigment, 
Thumb thro' your pallet! 
Look on the flamboyant World about ye. 
Hark to the resonant Soul within ye. 
Sons of the Rainboio, 
Limbs of the Spectrum, 
Paint ! 




73 



BLACK ON GOLD 

In blinding golds the sun has set, 

The yellow fields are ablaze with grain: 
Against this halo of fiery mane 

She stands — a pillar of Jet. 

Some sombre peasant garb uncouth, 

Which falls, from shoulder to ankle bone, 
In rough swift folds, bedrapes alone 

The Moabitess Ruth. 

No filet curbs her solemn gloom 

Of hair, close coiled about her head, 
Her eyes are black with grief unshed, 

And fathomless as Doom. 

Her arms are naked, her feet are bare: 
A widow stray from far-off lands — 
And yet as straight as Right she stands, 

And stark as Hebrew prayer. 
74 



WHITE ON BRONZE 

Against the huge bronze palace gates 

Which guard the Court of the Winged Bull, 
The Queen, resolved and beautiful, 

Hadassah Esther waits. 

Behind her falls in full white folds 
The mantle sacred to queenly brides; 
Her silken shift around her glides 

As a snake of curious golds. 

A prayer still scents her panting breath, 

But Hope is clinched in her tremulous hands; 
Who enters here uncalled — so stands 

The law of the Medes — woos death. 

O fairest daughter of that race 

Whose fate alone canst thou make sure, 
What gloom of Kinghood shall endure 

The dawn which lights thy face! 



15 



WHITE AND GOLD ON GREEN 

Against the cliff, asweat with mould, 

Like a snake skin, green in a pale moonlight, 
A virgin lies as a splash of white 

On a heap of shattered gold. 

Her raiment torn to shreds, and scrolled 
As scud blown loose by the driving storm 
Lays bare the swell and strain of her form 

As she writhes on her rack of gold. 

She is dying, bruised and racked with gold, 
Her bosom bleeds where a jewel smote; 
From crisped feet to gulping throat 

She is white with death and cold. 

Woe to the shameless virgin who sold 
Rome's maidenhead to the Sabine: Woe! 
Tarpeia dies accursed, as snow 

In fire, on her bed of gold. 



76 



BLACK ON SILVER 

A shadowy figure robed in black, 

As a priestess, stands on the slimy ledge 
Of tufa, flush with the river's edge, 

Intently looking back. 

Across swift Tiber, spread in the night — 
A swirl of eddies from shore to shore, 
Aglow with the luscence of molten ore, 

In the sullen lunar light. 

About her like a banner whips 
Her dusky fell of loosened hair, 
Her clammy raiment moulds her bare 

As the water slowly drips. 

Through night and Tiber, back to her home, 
The Virgin Cloelia turns at the last 
To gaze defiance at danger past, 

And safe on the breast of Rome. 



77 



SILVER ON BLUE 

The falling waters weave a screen 

Of sprays and moonbeams of sapphire blue, 
Behind which rears up, shimmering through, 

The sorceress Melusine. 

Her sharp white breasts are strained and bare, 
Her hands are locked behind her head, 
While in sluggish coils of lustrous red 

Around her crawls her hair. 

Her loins and thighs are cased in 
A sheath of phosphorescent scales — 
Her elfin armor — which flares and pales, 

Like a hungry python's skin. 

Beware the beautiful thing unclean! 

The woman-snake who shines and sings! 

For her voice is poison, her beauty stings: 
The sorceress Melusine. 



78 



WHITE ON RED GOLD 

This is the nether deep of hells! 
In swirls of fire a seething flood, 
Afoam with tears, afroth with blood, 

In Eternal Torment wells. 

Gaunt ruddy stalactites depend 

Like flaming spears from the upper gloom. 

Adrip with the bloody sweat of doom 
And agony without end. 

An angel, poised in the core thereof 
On crystal wings, and clad in wear 
Irradiant, uplifts in prayer 

Her clasped hands in love. 

When Satan fell, of the Seraphim 
Eloa loved him with so great 
A love, she cast aside her state, 

And sinless, followed him. 




79 



THE SEVEN CHORDS OF THE 
LYRE 



PREFACE 

On Seven Hills sat Rome, and dared the levin; 

On Impious Egypt Seven Curses fell; 

The Seven Sins illumine Dante's Hell; 
And Seven Virtues star the Churchman's Heaven; 
The dark Mid-Age held Seven Champions 'plevin; 

While older time their Seven Marvels tell; 

The thunder rolls, Seven-stringed, from Phoebus' 
shell ; 
And swords which stab the Virgin's bosom are Seven. 

Where e'er we turn, forever facing us, 
The Archaic pot-hook stretches out its arm 
From dimmest pasts — as a gallows, ominous. 
I heed the Warning; Thou Divinely Young 
And Fair beyond all praising! Let thy Charm 
In Seven Songs — Mine Italy — be sung. 




83 



GENOA 

Supekb and dominant she lifts, to greet 
The stranger, coming over seas to her, 
That diadem of hills: resplendent spur 

From out the Virgin Alps, and still abeat 

With pulse of wars and trades long obsolete, 

Beneath which, once, she ruled the alternate purr 
And snarl of fleets, like hungry wolves, astir 

For blood or gold, accounting either sweet. 

Then came the grip of death with Venice — war 
Where Cain smote Cain — which left thee wounded sore, 

A naked quarry, France and Spain between! 

Yet be that as a shadow which has been; 
Arise! And claim thy birthright as of yore, 

The sunshine on thy hills still crowns thee Queen. 



84 



NAPLES 

The shore-line curves, before the purple scythe 
Which sweeps from Baia's flashing sands of gold 
To far-off Capri, whom the waves enfold 

A sapphire set in diamonds. How lithe 

And ever girlish doth she leap and writhe, 
This sacred sea! What modern were so bold 
To scoff at legends, Hesiod has told 

Of Amphitrite, when Song and Faith were blithe. 

Alas! Not so; the glamour wanes and dies. 

The same blue veil is on the hills, the same 

Vesuvius lifts his Altar-gift of flame; 
But Naples, on the Goddess's couch now lies — 
A slattern drab, with limbs sprawled anywise, 

And sleeps her harlot sleep of naked shame. 



85 



VENICE 

She cowers in rags, who once in shining mail 
Patrolled these inland waters, on her ark 
Beneath the lion-wings of Holy Mark, 

Valkyrie of the Christ, astride the gale. 

She crawls in squalor, she whose ducal veil 

Was starred with gems, whose robes with gold were 

stark, 
Before the face of whom all Fame grew dark, 

All Riches paltry, and all Beauty stale. 

She crouches tattered, sorrow-worn, and old, 
Beside this sea, one time her bridal bed, 
A mendicant! And yet such fire is shed, 
In after-glow from splendors dead and cold, 
A tragic halo rings her brows with gold; 
'Tis Belisaria, begging for her bread. 



ROME 

Upon the granite of thy brows august 

Two thousand years have poured, in blood and fire, 

Their drip of Sorrow, Hatred, and Desire, 
Their riots, murders, pestilence, and lust, 
Till thou sit hooded in an obscene crust 

Of sodden crimes, stagnating into mire, 

A Solitude, but for the waning choir 
Of priests, who batten on thy shards and dust. 

Now come these little men of later time, 
Who trick thee out in tawdry furbelows, 

And daub thy tragic mask, to play the Mime 
To mincing Paris! Man may superpose 

On Squalor Shame, and Ridicule on Crime: 
Thy face, Eternal Rome, transplendent glows. 



87 



FLORENCE 

Hail, Florence, full of grace! Madonna, hail! 

Beyond all others blessed be thy womb! 

About thy brows the love of man shall bloom, 
In prayer and song, till flesh and spirit fail; 
All lands, all times, all creeds of ours assail 

Thy shrine with pilgrimage, till scarce is room, 

For one late come, before thy shining tomb 
To kneel, so dense thy worshippers prevail. 

For thou wert chosen to bear the sacred gift 
Of Art again to man; from out the drift 

Of crumbling time thou bad'st him rise and tower, 
A God resurgent, clothed in beauty and power, 
With face of fire, and flashing arms uplift 
To sanctify thy name, O Lily-flower! 



SIENNA 

Blood-boltered mountain-cat ! Whose den is pronged 
On trident hills, winch redden and rumble still 
With old volcanic fevers, and the thrill 

Of unforgotten battles! How he wronged 

Who calls her vain, the grim old bard, who songed 
Of Heaven and Hell! She vain? whose every will 
Still drooled for blood, nor ever got her fill, 

Though charnels heaped, and reeking shambles 
thronged ? 

One thing redeems her, gems her with a crown 
So radiant, all her crimes are as a speck; 

W r hen all her Tuscan sisters, town by town, 
Like shackled slaves, lay grovelling at the beck 
Of Pope and Spain, she would not bend the neck; 

Free to the last, till Freedom's star went down. 



RAVENNA 

Between the Po, the sea, and the Apennine, 
There lies a land beshrouded in the pall 
Of fogs implacable, where fevers crawl 

Like slinking ghosts among its tragic pine; 

Here Rome, the hoary She-wolf, once divine, 
But toothless grown, last bayed her battle call, 
Last crouched to spring, her last great kill of all, 

Upon the unnumbered hordes of Gothic swine, 

And died the death worth chanting. Now beneath 
Blind skies, uncheered by plays of light and shade 

She thrones, Ravenna, cased in her sheath 
Of harsh Mosaics, porphyries and jade, 

A mummy, glaring through its lipless teeth 
And sockets void; Rome-haunted and afraid. 




90 



OTHER SONNETS 



IN MEMORIAM J. H. P. 

This was a Man, whose very living gave 
A higher sense to Life; a man whose soul 
Was strong as God, whose Mind was luminous whole 

As is a child's, whose heart was fresh and brave 

As woman's, yet of full grown Manhood, save 
That Sweetness tempered Might: to all a goal, 
To many a help, to none a foe. Let toll 

A world-wide Sorrow; He has taken Grave. 

I am not one to bandy words with Fate; 

What is must be, whatever Man design. 
Stand thou and triumph at the Doomful Gate, 

Hold fast the future; but the past is mine, 
Old Death! nor canst thou make one desolate 

On whom such friendship once has come to shine. 



93 



AZRAEL 

Lift up your heads, ye everlasting Gates! 

For on the threshold, where your portals throw 
Their shadows big with mysteries and woe, 

The Archangel Azrael in silence waits 

Admission to his realm. No diadem freights 
The brows august, no sword of living fire 
Leaps in his hand, no robes of King's attire 

Bespeak the imperial Herald of the Fates! 

Upon his straight and narrow couch, with eyes 
Immovable, and sealed lips, he lies 

In awful majesty, the King of Dreads! 
For on the dim and haunted other land 
We know not of, alone at his command, 

Ye Everlasting Gates! lift up your heads. 



94 



FIAT LUX 

"Let there be Light!" He said; and lo! the world 
Broke into color, as a smitten harp 
Breaks into sudden song; against the scarp 

Of purple mounts the crimson sunbeams swirled, 

The woods were golden with flower-gems bepearled, 
The sea shot silver to the very warp 
Of blushing virgin skies, and Life grew sharp 

With magic Splendor, as a flag unfurlea. 

Then Woman said: "Let there be light!" and lo! 

The dark recesses of my soul grew white, 
As in the Dawn primeval; at a blow 

The shadows crept like reptiles out of sight, 
And where was Eblis but a while ago 

Stands Love, Eternal Warden of the Light! 



95 



IN THE CATHEDRAL AT SENS 

We stood beneath an old Cathedral nave 

And listened — while a far, high organ poured 
In thunderous anthems surging chord on chord 

Thro' fretted rafters, like a lifting wave — 

A mighty lamentation from the grave 

Of that unnumbered, clean -forgotten horde, 
The immemorable Dead, who pray the Lord 

For some requital of the life he gave. 

Had not ye Sunshine? Poor forgotten Dead! 

And Song, the living wine of hearts bowed down? 
Had not ye dreamful Sleep? Had not ye Love, 
Which circleth flesh and Soul in fiery crown? 
There is no prize for Life, once Life is sped, 

But Living, ah! how sweet the wage thereof! 



96 



MORS NON ULTIMA 

We cast it off, our heavy load of days, 

And lie down by the roadside, out of breath, 
With bursting brows and flesh that quivereth 

With overstrain of toil. Our ears and gaze 

How eagerly we reach toward the haze 

Of coming night, to look our first on Death, 
To listen for that last command which saith: 

"Thy work is done, good servant! Go thy ways! 

And then, to rest — But is the rest so sure? 

What if we find but heavier loads instead? 
What if the life-long training to endure 

Were but to fit us for the task ahead? 
Who knows what struggles hide, what toils mature, 

Behind that awful jaw-clinch of the Dead? 



97 



A RECIPE 

Good Student, take thou first a Woman — young, 
And sweet, and fair, but — more important still— 
(For thereby hangs the Future, good or ill), 

Let her be She all other maids among. 

First in thy heart, and last upon thy tongue. 
Then in the ripening time, as God may will, 
Add Children, two or three, nay! to thy fill, 

No limit on the number need be sprung. 

Next choose a House; no hackneyed box for hire, 
But one, thy very own, in years to come, 
As in the past, and now: for it is good 
The nest should be coeval with the brood. 
With Money season, as thy Tastes require; 
So reads the recipe: "To make a Home." 



98 



THE HOLY LADDER 

The ladder of Jacob's dream? Who has not scaled 
Its jewelled stairway through the solemn night, 
To find at last the Sky, spread out of sight — 

Dark, inaccessible — a Deep unsailed! 

Who has not climbed the rungs of song, and failed; 
To snare those words, whose wings of fire-flight 
Had spanned the Darkness, and attained the fight 

Where Love in splendor sits, by Splendors hailed. 

How often, straining from its loftiest rung, 
Have I stood dumb before the Deep of Love, 

Which bards most tuneful still have left unsung 
For lack of words to tell the deep thereof — 

And cried for eagle-wings to soar among 

The Perfect Songs which saunter past, above. 



THE VALUE OF A LITTLE WATER 

If one came forth before the Judgment- Seat 
Who bore between his hands nor tribute-gold, 
Nor frankincense and myrrh — as Kings of old 

Out of the timeless East, came forth to greet 

The Baby-God: would silver rebeck bleet? 

Or golden trumpet blare ? Would harps, which hold 
The pent-up thunder-hymns, their wings unfold 

To canopy the path before his feet? 

Xay! though in rags, or naked to the bone, 
Or fouler than all nakedness, he came 

Studded with boils, and scaled with leprosies, 
If he but show one puny tear of his 
Which hath been shed for suffering not his own, 
The Gates shall lift, Hosannahs ring his name! 



100 



MATER REDEMPTRIX 

I wish I could believe that once there came 

To cleanse the Race of Earth and Earthy things 
An Holy One, who loved us, bore the stings 

And bruises for us, shouldered all our shame, 

Our heaped load of sins — beyond a name — 

And died, that all this too might die. What wings 
Such pure belief might lend a soul who sings 

A blind-eyed song, a halting prayer and lame. 

And yet when I remember She has been 
My maker, my redeemer, and my hope 

On Earth; and now her spirit guards her child 
Through darkness and the devious ways I grope. . . . 
One Saviour have I known and proved and seen! 
Why should the Master Miracle seem so wild? 



101 



DAWN ON THE AMICALOLA 

The purple hood of prayer is on the hills, 

These huge dumb priests who kneel around the Night 
As if atoning, by some fateful rite, 

For all the sins of Earth, and human ills; 

A rugged ring, whose changeless presence stills 
The fever pulse of Life, whose shadows smite 
The present blind with sleep. It is the height 

Of Darkness! with a shiver, crawls and chills 

The wind, slow fanning hippogriffen wings! 

And in my heart I ask what fearful things, 
What cursed plague, what nameless martyrdoms 
Are these grim beadsmen calling on our slums? 

When upward in the East there sudden springs 
A burst of crimson. Lo! the answer comes. 



102 



PALIMPSESTS 

Fair sheets of Vellum, soft to the eye and touch, 
And consecrate to highest Thought, from East 
Or West, a poet's table spread in feast! 

Then came the Goths: fire-stain, and bloody smutch, 

When Culture strangled in the devils' clutch. 
Then utter night, when Bruno, simple priest, 
Foments his pot with Us, or stalls his beast. . . . 

Oh! we have been befouled, bescribbled much: 

For when the beasts had done, the fools began 
And over all the pure and stately scroll, 

Their lives of Saints, their gawky litanies ran 
In clown's grimace and monkish folderal 
And yet beneath it all, surviving whole, 

The Song divine still sings the Hope of Man. 



103 



TRAVELLERS' NOTES 



PREFACE 

Tourists, when the furious charge is 
Made upon them by the foe, 

Draw their notes on Morgan Harps, 
Brown & Shipley, or John Monroe. 

Gustibus non disputandum — 
Here's another tourist's prank! 

Who has drawn his notes at random 
On a vague Parnassian Bank. 

Were they honoured, or protested? 

Little use the inquiry now : 
He was much more interested 
In the Why than in the How. 



107 



IN THE DOLOMITES 

Says Pomagagnon to Tofana Mount 

"Oh, snow-clad sister of mine! 
What are the three huge rents I count 

In those glacier robes of thine?" 

"These ages, beneath the Storm and the Sun, 

Have I kneeled as under a rod, 
And these the wounds, oh, Pomagagnon! 

Where smote the wrath of God." 

Says Mount Tofana to Pomagagnon: 

"Oh, huge red brother of mine, 
What are the three foul stains upon 

Thy hunchback granite spine?" 

"These ages I stand under Sun and Stars, 

An enduring rack, Tofan'! 
The stains thou seest are the Slavery Scars 

Of that crueller Master, Man!" 



108 



MARLOTTE 

A pleasant drive to a pretty town, 
• By painters loved, this Marlotte! 
All homely grays and russet brown, 
Like much bewerthered Charlotte. 

A pleasant drive on a pretty day, 
Of fitful shine and sprinkling; 

Hood up, and there's a squall to pay! 
Hood down, and sunbeams twinkling. 

A pretty drive in any case, 

For when alone together, 
It's hip! for any sort of a place, 

In any kind of weather. 



109 



FONTAINEBLEAU 

O Fountain of Beautiful Water! 

As pilgrims to kneel at thy Shrine, 
We have come to thee, Somnolent daughter 

Of France, for the Peace which is thine. 

Far away from the Crowd thou abhorrest, 
From the surge of the World and its bark, 

We have come to the naves of thy forest, 
We have come to the maze of thy park. 

And the bond of old Love shall grow tauter, 
The frets of high living surcease: 

O Fountain of Beautiful Water, 
For thine is the Kingdom of Peace. 



110 



CAPE COD 

Ah! the snore of thy sleepy seas, 

The sighs of thy perfect air! 
Not a thing to vex, not a thought to tease- 
Not even a microscopic crease 

In thy roseleaf, anywhere. 

Yet, an insatiate thing is Man! 

Was Caesar content when first in Rome? 
With all thy blessings about me, I plan 
Some scheme of living whereby I can 

Be lazier than at home. 



Ill 



OX THE XORMAX COAST 

IVz -- fi;s _: — : :: s:.ni. 

Or black .mder lowering weather, 
But never., till come to this Norman I 

Both black and green together 

I'" ": seen the water, at dawn, like a flame, 
At noon, like a peacock's feather, 

Bui ::ever, till unto this shore I came. 
Both bine and gold together. 

I' i st in it silver under the moon, 
Or in sunset blush to heather.. 

But never till here, of an afternoon. 
Both purple and gray together. 

Oh, Xonnan Manche! I now conceive — 
Tii: aedh all Mas Mailer's— 

Thine etymology, thou sleeve 
CM Joseph's C : at :: : Jors! 



::■ 



ON THE ROAD TO PISTOJA 

A beautiful day, and a beautiful ride 

For a beautiful town to see! 
While far and near, on every side 
The peasants, male and female, vied 

In plaiting furiouslee. 

Straw hats on floors and roofs were spread, 

Straw hats on every tree, 
Straw-hatted the very river-bed, 
And still all Tuscany plaiting ahead, 

And plaiting furiouslee. 

Till there came a delicious maddening dream 

Of a mad-hatter's world to be, 
Where we drifted down a plaited stream 
In a leghorn hat, tipped hard-a-beam — 

And plaiting furiouslee. 



113 



FLORENCE 

For close upon a thousand years 

A thousand mighty Craftsmen, 
Of olden Greeks, the single peers. 

As builders, carvers, draughtsmen, 

Have wrought with chisel, brush, and square. 

In holy calm or frenzy, 
To make incomparably fair 

This jewel in stone: Firenze! 

And thus they labored to the end — 

Unknown to them the reason — 
Two simple u foresters " might spend 

A piu die perjetto season. 



114 



PRATO 

At Prato Church there's a pulpit stand 

Which Mino carved in stone, 
In shape of a beaker, fit for the hand 

Of a giant God alone. 

O Bard whose songs in stone are versed, 
What a beautiful trope of thine! 

For the Holy Word the peoples thirst: 
Lo! a cup for the living wine. 



115 



I 



IN THE SMOKY RIDGE OF GEORGIA 

I am voiceless here: these hugenesses appall! 
For him who stands beneath the vast dim wall 
Of hunchback forests, climbing, crowd on crowd, 
Toward the King-peak hooded in the cloud, 
Life seems such puppet show, and Man so small. 

Where God's unnumbered names in thunder fall, 
Where mountains chaunt and leaping waters bawl, 
As one deep to another calls aloud — 

I am voiceless here. 

But in the future, if the World should call 
My lips to song — a David sang to Saul — 
This memory may lift erect and proud 
Before my waiting soul, in Kingly shroud, 
And give me strength for mighty song, withal 
I am voiceless here. 



116 



RONDEAUX, RONDELS, AND 
TRIOLETS 



O Rondeau, Rondel, Triolet! 

Joujoux de la tant doulce France! 
Le bon vieux temps s'afjriolait — 
O Rondeau, Rondel, Triolet! 
De voire atour bariole, 

Et de vos rimes de bombance : 
O Rondeau, Rondel, Triolet! 

Joujoux de la tant doulce France! 



119 



OX THE OLDEX TIME 

Ix the Olden Time, through Turk or Djinn, 
Through fire and blood, would a man but win 
The virgin blossom of Woman's love, 
With mace he smote, with sword he clove, 
"Pour Dieu et ma Dame," quoth the Paladin. 

But now the dreams have been gathered in; 

The fairest fabric our poets spin 

Is crash to what the troubadours wove 
In the Olden Time. 

To-day, the gold transmutes to "tin," 
The Stock Exchange is the lists wherein — 
With Bulls and Bears for the beasts thereof — 
My Lady Cunegonde casts her glove. . . . 
We risk our cash where they risked their skin 
In the Olden Time. 



120 



TO AN OLD HOUSE 

Not much to boast about, this old 

Dilapidated house: that bold 
Democritus himself would grue 
With horrors at thy walls askew 

And roofs half -eaten through with mould. 

For Summer-heat and Winter-cold 

Thou art unmatched; a very Jew 
Could ask for thee, shouldst thou be sold- 

Not much! 

And yet such memories manifold 
Of happy love sleep in thy hold, 
There's pleasure in thy very view, 
And joy to walk thy creaks anew, 
Shall I defame thee now, or scold? 

Not much! 



121 



MISOZOIC RONDEAU 

So Time goes by in Splendor or in Weeds, 
With braying trumpets heralding great deeds, 

Or dead-march monodies of muffled drums. 

While Kingdoms and all other sort of "doms" 
Go down, and Principalities and Creeds, 

Into the Nameless Nothing no one heeds, 
The litter whence Ingenious History breeds 

Pat Morals : Slums from Flowers, and Flowers from 
Slums! 

So Time goes by. 

And we, poor Mushrooms, sprung in trodden meads, 
Alas! who knows from what hap-hazard seeds; 
We go on swealing till the Darkness comes, 
WTiile Nature sits by, mumbling senile gums, 
Unheeding all, as crones who tell their beads. 
So Time goes by. 



122 



RONDEL 

(Fortunately for the recipient, accompanied by 
Russian violets.) 

The sweetest thanks I can express 

Are naught to what your note had earned; 
Though Fancy shone, or Pathos burned, 

Mere words are nothing — rhymes still less. 

My simple Muse does not profess 

A skill to sing, where you're concerned — 

The sweetest thanks I can express 

Are naught to what your note has earned. 

And so, in this, my sore distress, 

To these blue friends of mine — well-learned 
In saying pretty things — I turned 
For help to send, in fitting dress, 
The sweetest thanks I can express. 



123 



RONDEL 

(In answer to a very pretty compliment in verse.) 

If a poet meet a poet 
Coming through the mail, 
Were his homage ne'er so hale, 

How the dickens can he show it? 

Pen and ink are fire inchoate, 
Still I fear me doomed to fail, 

If a poet meet a poet 
Coming through the mail. 

Words were better? Yes, I know it! 
Better still: that Scotty tale 
Touching "bodies "—I'll go bail 

That were still the best introit, 

If a poet meet a poet 
Coming through the mail. 



124 



LONG-LEGGED TRIOLETS 

Home again from our wanderings 

Through the long blue maze of a holiday! 

The steamer puffs, the water sings; 

"Home again from our wanderings!" 

And we, grown feign of serious things, 
Rejoice to turn, after muckle play, 

Home again from our wanderings 

Through the long blue maze of a holiday. 

Through the long blue maze of a holiday 
We carried our Love, and kept it fair. 

Not once did its glory dim or gray 

Through the long blue maze of a holiday. 

And now, come back to our hearth to stay, 
We know by the radiance it lightens there, 

Through the long blue maze of a holiday 
We carried our Love and kept it fair. 



125 



THE MASTER OF THE GODS 

A little while and we shall not 
Look on His face again; our lot 
Is not as the Angels to lay hold 
Upon His trailing robes of gold, 
And chain Him to our little spot. 

Yet all we see Him; for a jot 
Of time He lingers by our cot, 
To tell His glories manifold 

A little while. 

And be His stay no matter what, 
His coming ne'er shall be forgot; 

The memory clings, to keep the cold 
From out our hearts, when growing old. 
Oh! praise Him then for that He taught 
A little while. 



126 



AS TO THE IDLENESS OF VERSE; OR, THE 
$ VERSATILITY OF IDLERS 

All the poems known to Fame 
Are but idle rhymes in books! 

I know one would put to shame 

All the poems known to Fame; 

'Tis a simple little dame 
Yet beside her comely looks 

All the poems known to Fame 
Are but idle rhymes nT books! 



127 



PINS AND NEEDLES 



THE EMPTY CRADLE 

Far to the south the birds have flown, 
Red stains on the woods grow wider, 

As the mother sits, apart and alone, 
An empty cradle beside her. 

Sweet lips apart, soft eyes which strain; 

Alas! for this world of treason! 
How cruel to know there will come again 

Both birds and leaves, next season! 

But this — and yet she is smiling. . . . Pause 
O Poet! and spare thy plumbing! 

If the cradle be empty, it's only because 
Its little tenant is coming. 



131 



A CHARMER 

She has no beauty; my memory trips 
O'er a hundred prettier women; 

But an ugliness, which puckers the lips, 
The smart of a ripe persimmon. 

She has no brains, and is learned alone 
In her golfing and dancing classes; 

But in her eyes you may see your own 
Conceit, as in looking-glasses. 

She has no heart; just a neat little pump, 

A marvel of regular action; 
Yet I'd give my life to hear it thump 

But once out of time by a fraction. 



132 



THE HAPPY FISHERMAN 

The night is rough, and the wind sings shrill 
On the rocks where the foam grins white. 

O Lord! save all honest folk from ill 
Who are out at sea, the night! 

And the poet's song goes in fervor forth 
To the men who fish, to their wives 

Who kneel on shore, with face to the North, 
To pray for their husbands' lives. 

Meanwhile the wife, midst her pots and jars, 

Is raising — politely — Cain; 
While the fisherman smokes, and thanks his stars 

He is safe on the stormy Main. 



133 



SORTES MATRIMONIALES 

You often ask me what I think 

Of Marriage, and complain 
I simply smoke my pipe and wink, 

Nor answer back again. 

Is it real Heaven? as some suppose, 

Or earth? as others say? 
Old graybeard Montaigne grunts : " Who knows ! " 

"Perhaps!" laughs Rabelais. 

To me the problem seems so vast, 

So intricately set, 
I think, and think. . . . When Life is past 

I shall be thinking yet. 



134 



THE SEA 

The season is listless and the hour supine 

As the tide goes slipping out. 
Look at the beautiful beast! Feline 

As a cat, as a nun devout. 

All gray and cloistrally decorous, 
With a purr of prayer at her lips; 

Who can mistake the mincing puss: 
A maid, to her finger-tips. 

As soft as cream, and sweet as wine, 

But logical, not a bit; 
It takes, oh, type of the Feminine, 

A German to call thee "IT!" 



135 



AN IXTROIT OF SPRING 

Over the Earth, lying stark in her nakedness, 
Over the graves of old seasons long dead, 

Spring throws his mantle of blossoming flakedness, 
Making a carpet for April to tread. 

Lift up your voices, you red-throated Choristers: 
Robins whom April has brought in her train; 

Lift up your censors, you shy little foresters, 
Pansies and Violets, smell sweet again. 

Love! yea, arouse thee from silence which chronicles 
Comfort, as torpor betokens the Cold — 

Sing thou the Spring, in his gala canonicals; 
Love! who art April, though centuries old. 



136 



A VALENTINE 

She looks so precise, with her modest blue eyes, 
And her lips rounded out as a cherry, 

That one thinks her at first in devotions immersed: 
Pretty, Prim, Puritan Mary. 

Do not call her sedate, on the spot — only wait 
Till you happen to catch her unwary; 

She's the spirit of Fun, in the shell of a nun, 
Pretty, Prim, Puritan Mary. 

Though her rosy lips grow to the shape of an O, 

She's not given to sing "Miserere," 
And her lashes but screen such a frolic between: 

Pretty, Prim, Puritan Mary. 

What care I, if she drape, in a Calvinist cape, 

The gossamer wings of a fairy, 
I'll be Pagan no more, but a bigot adore 

Pretty, Prim, Puritan Mary. 



137 



SWEET BELLS JANGLED 

I feel within me — grumbling low — 

That demon born to bait us 
Poor poets, who thro' weal or woe 
Are doomed to struggle, grunt, and throe 

To expel thee, Divine Afflatus! 

I know thee there; I feel thee sting 

Beneath my metrical tunic; 
Prelusive, as I think to sing, 
And yet, I doubt thou art a thing 

Virgilian Schools dubbed Punic. 

But stay! It's not the Muse who's wrong; 

Her Heliconian philter 
Is pure as ever — clear and strong, 
There's nothing the matter with the Song, 

It's the fiddle that's out of kilter. 



138 



THE MAGIC MIRROR 

A magic mirror hangs the wall 

Of every poet's tenement. 
From heart of which, if he but call, 

Nay though he call not, strangely blent, 

In tones and colors marvellous 
With forms divine and faces fond, 

The visions rise, which are sent to us 
From Worlds above us and beyond. 

And if — alone to hear him sing 

The glorious mysteries which he sees — 

The song-bird hushes on its wing, 
The forest silences her trees — 

And even Men may fall to be 
Respectful, in their flippant wise, 

What awe were theirs could they but see 
The splendors which appall his eyes. 



139 



"NEITHER WILL I CONDEMN THEE" 

On the lowliest step of the altar stair, 
In tattered raiment, with matted hair, 
A woman kneeled in passionate prayer, 
Fierce in her lowliness. 

A stray, from the squalid slaves of Sin, 
Who toil in shame, and in sorrow spin, 
From the outer world she had drifted in, 
Fain of God's holiness. 

With averted brows pure virgins passed, 
And scornful matrons, with eyes upcast, 
Whilst man recoiled from the leper, aghast: 
Man, who did fashion it! 

Though the world has closed, as upon the dead, 
From the windows that rise to the skies overhead 
A sunbeam falls on the cowering head — 
One is compassionate. 



140 



THE MASTER-GODS 

It's a humorous thing when the Spring is green 
To see young Sunbeams tripping between 
A kissable Earth and a kissing sky, 
Like a peal of laughter rippling by. 

It's a lovable thing when years are few, 
To remember red lips and eyes of blue — 
As children go gathering flowers — to tress 
A chaplet of dreams for idleness. 

A beautiful thing: this gossamer spun 
By a boyish heart or a childish sun! 
But Sunshine truly, or Love ? Ah, no ! 
The Gods reveal themselves not so. 

A landscape cowering beneath the pall 

Of a black and angry thunder-squall, 

When gold, like an arrow, shoots from above. . 

So strike the Masters: Sun and Love. 



141 



REQUIESCAT 

Swing the Bell! 

Another year goes down to the dead! 
With rigid feet and bedraggled wings, 
With broken crown still circling its head, 
Down to the grave of forgotten things. 

Swing the Bell! 

Over the days of its glories departed, 
Over the days of its miseries spent, 
Over the promise it bore, when it started, 
Over the failure it was as it went. 

Swing the Bell! 

It lived and failed — it was but a year; 
Shall a year be more than a man divine? 
Peace to thy Sleep, and Forgiveness here, 
For I loved thee well, and thy faults were mine. 

Swing the Bell! 



142 



EDAX RERUM 

From oldest ages to our own, 
All they who preach or rhyme, 

Who paint on wall or grave on stone, 
Have ever pictured Time: 

A vagrant on the face of Earth, 

A graybeard grim and lithe, 
An hour-glass dangling at his girth, 

And in his grip a scythe. 

What mockery to call thee fleet! 

How false thy snowy locks! 
Thy brows are strong as Noon, thy feet 

Are planted like the Rocks. 

Grave Sphinx who wert and still shalt be 

Immutable as now, 
Beneath thee whirls the driven sea: 

'Tis we who pass, not Thou. 



14S 



A HOPE 

If I were dead I should not care to sleep 
In some funereal, tomb-environed spot, 

Where plumed firs despond, and willows weep — 
Where grief is formal, friendliness is not. 

But rather, let me he beneath some mound 
Much used of summer nights for lovers' trysts, 

Or under flags all afternoon asound 

With clatter and thump of little feet and fists. 



144 



Here's an end to the pedlar's pack: 
Pins and needles, needles and pins; 

Is there none to cry: Alack/ 

Here's an end to the pedlar's pack. 

Wish me joy on my journey back? 
That's the best my labour wins? 

Here's an end to the pedlar's pack: 
Pins and needles, needles and pins. 




145 



AUG 1 1906 



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